


Beautiful Pressure

by musicalgirl4474



Series: Febuwhump 2021 [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Caring Dean Winchester, Depression, Gen, I can't tell because of my own co-morbidity., I guess both then, Suicidal Sam Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts, or maybe it's anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:14:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29165544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicalgirl4474/pseuds/musicalgirl4474
Summary: Mature for suicidal themes. Take care of yourselves, PLEASE.Febuwhump Day 2: "I can't take this anymore""Every muscle is pulled taught, hands clenching and a scream building in his chest. Caught in his chest. He knows it won’t come out, even if he tries. Any sound coming out of his mouth would be woefully inadequate to abate the pressure. He needs to pull himself together before Dean comes back."Spoiler: he doesn't.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Febuwhump 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140197
Comments: 1
Kudos: 42





	Beautiful Pressure

**Author's Note:**

> So, um, this was very raw for me to write, because a lot of it is me projecting onto Sam. Sorry Sam.

There was something dark inside him. It itched and swelled and filled his throat with sticky over-sweetness. (Maybe that was why he ate what Dean called ‘rabbit-food’ . . . couldn’t stand sweet things.) The gun in the room is Dean’s, under the pillow. Sam’s tempted to take it out, feel the real, cold weight in his hand. (He’d never use that gun for this. It was Dean’s favorite, he wouldn’t take that away from him. He’d hurt him enough.)

Had Sam ever _not_ hurt Dean? Dean had had to grow up too fast because of him. Had given Sam what he wanted, not thinking about himself. Dean deserved to think about himself. (When Dean had had the chance, he’d sold his soul to Hell to bring Sam back. Sam doesn’t want to think about that.)

The sheets are rough against his skin in a way he could have sworn they were not last night. Every muscle is pulled taught, hands clenching and a scream building in his chest. Caught in his chest. He knows it won’t come out, even if he tries. Any sound coming out of his mouth would be woefully inadequate to abate the pressure. He needs to pull himself together before Dean comes back. Would like to just lay here, tense on the bed Dean had claimed, until his muscles can’t hold it anymore and relax into something like bliss. The closest he gets these days: a kind of foggy nothingness.

Sam’s lost track of the number of times he’s wondered if Lucifer was telling the truth; would bring him back to life if he died. If a bullet lodged itself in his brain. (If he put the bullet there.) A quick death, the kind that he and Dean doled out to monsters (like him. _Vampire_ Dean had called him. If he was inclined to engineering maybe he could find a way to behead himself. A home-made guillotine. _Ha._ )

There is something so desolate about death not being an option. He doesn’t think he’s ever been actively suicidal, but somewhere in the back of his mind there was always an idea that there was an _out_ if things got too bad. (Not that he wouldn’t go to Hell for the things he’s done, but, well. At least he would just be another damned soul among all the rest.)

Sam pushed his face into Dean’s pillow, feeling the vague outline of the gun. _Pathetic._ He was so _pathetic_. Wanting to leave Dean alone to face the apocalypse that _Sam_ had started. (Always ignoring that Dean started the breaking of the seals; because it was Sam’s fault Dean had gone to Hell anyway, and who would blame a man for succumbing to decades of torture? Sam was the idiot led around by an addiction to demon blood.)

The pressure was building in his chest, his head, sticky black tar slugging down his throat towards his lungs, stomach. Sam wanted desperately to explode. Let everything out, let all of him spatter across the walls in an unidentifiable black spray. Make the pressure _stop_. Make it stop make it stop makeitstop!

He can feel tears gathering against his eyelids, and wonders vaguely if his tears would be black with the taint inside him. He hears the door to the motel room open, but he doesn’t _notice_ it, doesn’t realize what it means. Mostly just thinks that whoever it is can just go ahead and kill him. Whatever. Then he doesn’t have to muster up the energy and conviction to do it himself.

There’s a hand over the back of his own now, calluses pressing into the skin of his fist.

“Hey Sammy, you doing okay?”

And Sam could probably unwind himself (pretend to, anyway), let air into his lungs easy, rather than gasping for the rough feel of it in the back of his throat. But he can’t take it anymore. Pretending only makes the pressure build, and takes away the relief of knowing he’s holding it in. When he pretends to relax, the horror and icky oil-dark taint inside him threaten to come out and infect everyone else. When he’s tense like this, he’s a barrier between himself and the world.

The hand on his is trying to uncurl his fingers from the sheet, warm skin pressing itself to his brittle coldness. Another hand finds its way to the nape of his neck, resting there heavily. (Except, it wouldn’t be heavy if it was just resting. There’s pressure there. Squeezing? Sam’s a little too out of it to care.)

“Have you taken anything Sam?” 

Taken anything? Like what? A bath?

“Sammy!” The voice sounds scared now, so Sam jerks his head to the side, blinking to find a face past the tears drying at the corners of his eyes.

Dean. Because of course it’s Dean. Dean can’t ever get rid of his burdensome baby brother.

The hand that had been at his nape is on his forehead now. Checking for a temperature? Wh- oh. Right. Dean thought he took something. Like . . . pills. Like suicide. No, pills are expensive. Won’t waste even the credit card company’s money on his own death. Bullets are much cheaper. “Haven’t,” he manages to force out of his mouth, and even just that one word hurts, when the pressure eases for a moment and comes back so much worse.

“Haven’t taken anything?” Dean asks, a scared light making his eyes fever-bright. Sam nods, and then, because Dean looks so fucking scared, so lost, Sam forces his lips into something of a smile. It was a ‘be fine in a couple minutes’ smile, a ‘just letting out all that pent-up emotion I’m not supposed to show’ smile. A message Dean will receive, hopefully without the poisonous undertone of oily-black _evil-I’m-evil, the literal Devil, boy-king of Hell_. Maybe Dean will look at the envelope, see the sender, and throw it in the junk mail. Stupid metaphor. Stupid, stupid metaphor. (Or not, because anyone else would have thrown Sam away by now. Dean had tried, and Sam had clinged like a leech. Goddamn it.)

“Did you have a nightmare?” is Dean’s next question, face carefully free of any judgement. Dean’s been having nightmares about Hell. Sam knows it, and wants to blow himself apart a little more with each one because they’re _his_ fault. His skin crawls when he nods again. Dean won’t catch the lie. Sam’s body’s pulled too tight for his usual tells. His whole body is a map for Dean, but today it’s folded and his brother can’t read it. Good.

Dean says nothing else, only clambers all the way onto the bed himself, laying warm against Sam’s tense side. “Go back to sleep Sammy,” he says after a moment, not bothering to pull the blanket over them in the warm room. Just tucks his arms around Sam’s shoulder and under his neck.

Sam wasn’t sleeping, hadn’t _been_ sleeping, but he could try to pretend. Pretend to pretend. He would still be stiff, tight, holding all that dangerous pressure inside himself. But maybe it would be enough for Dean to fool himself to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos make me ridiculously happy.


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